


Strong, Silent and With a Really Nice Apartment

by misura



Category: Primeval
Genre: Community: smallfandomfest, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-06
Updated: 2010-06-06
Packaged: 2017-10-25 22:45:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/275660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Connor reckons he might have a type.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strong, Silent and With a Really Nice Apartment

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: _Connor/Ryan, crush_

It wasn't a crush. Crushes were things girls got - or, well, girls that weren't Abby, which was not to say Abby wasn't a girl (she _was_ , and a really cute one, too, if you went in for that whole not-cute thing) but just that Abby didn't really seem to get any crushes, ever. Granted, she'd seemed to have something that had vaguely resembled a crush on Stephen, only, well, that'd been _Stephen_.

Connor'd bet there were plenty of people who acted a bit silly and unlike their usual selves when it came to Stephen - with the exception of Professor Cutter, of course, which was probably why he and Stephen seemed such good friends, and nothing more than friends.

His point being that if Abby'd been liable to getting crushes, she'd have gotten one on Connor, and she hadn't, _ergo_ Abby didn't get crushes the way normal girls did. And Connor didn't get crushes either, because he wasn't a girl.

Even so.

The thing was, it was kind of inevitable, wasn't it? Not crushes, obviously, just that whole bit where you spent a lot of time in someone's company and they kind of saved your life a couple of times, and then you started _thinking_. Not like Connor could shut down his brains or something.

All right, so possibly he thought Ryan was a pretty cool guy, in a manly kind of way. Not _pretty_ , the way Stephen was, and not _cute_ , the way Abby wasn't, but not precisely hard on the eyes, either. Not the kind of face you'd wake up to in the morning and run away from screaming (which totally hadn't happened to Connor, ever; it had been a simple misunderstanding and they'd both been wearing costumes the night before, and it wasn't as if it had been _his_ fault he'd been wearing the same costume as her boyfriend who'd been supposed to meet her at the con and anyway, what kind of person mistook a complete stranger for her boyfriend just because he was wearing a Darth Vader costume? Totally not Connor's fault that he'd thought she'd fancied him just for the costume, was it?)

Ryan looked normal, was what he looked like. Solid. Dependable. The kind of guy you'd room with and who'd always do his part of the chores on time and was never late with the rent and never minded lending you a few quid when times were rough, even though he knew you were only going to pay him back in ten years or so, if you still remembered that you owed him by then.

He didn't look like a nagger, did Ryan. Might hog the blankets a bit, but then nobody was perfect, and anyway, Connor was a bit of a blanket-hogger, too, so that'd give them something in common.

Connor could picture living with Ryan, really he could.

Ryan didn't talk a lot (see: not a nagger). Connor talked plenty. Some people might even say he babbled, although Connor thought that was rather too harsh a term. So he liked to vocally express himself: what of it? Other people painted, or wrote, or sang. Besides, more often than not, he talked to people who didn't hear him anyway (like Captain Kirk, who really should get a clue about what it meant any time McCoy touched his shoulder in that special way, or any time Spock gave him the eyebrow). No harm in that, was there?

Connor wasn't very outdoors-y, and he didn't much like physical exercise. Ryan probably worked out daily, being a soldier and all. They made a perfect team: Connor could provide the brains and Ryan would be the brawn. They'd fight crime together - or, well, creatures. For now.

There was a lot of injustice in the world, Connor knew (did he ever know) and while he didn't think even Ryan would be able to get Joss Whedon to finish _Firefly_ good and proper (and not just with a series of comics), Connor definitely thought some other, lesser wrongs might be set to right if he came at them with a tall, not-very-dark and handsome-in-an-ordinary-kind-of-way marine.

A tall, not-very-dark and handsome-in-an-ordinary-kind-of-way marine who owned, it had to be said, a really very nice apartment. Spacy. Clean. Didn't look like a proper apartment people lived in, actually.

Of course, Connor hadn't yet seen all of it. Might be there was a messy room hiding behind one of those doors he hadn't gotten to open last night, when he'd been looking for the bathroom.

Might be there was a room with a really big TV, the kind only people who weren't students and had an actual job and lived in nice, spacy, clean apartments could afford to buy, with a cabinet next to it that would be just the right size for Connor's DVD-collection. That'd be nice.

Not 'getting a crush' nice, just ... nice. Connor reckoned it was about time the universe did something nice for him, what with the way he'd been running around fixing holes in time and space and all. The universe _owed_ him. Big time.

An apartment with a bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen-room and some more rooms was just the beginning, and Connor wasn't even sure if he ought to count it, given that, in all fairness, it was actually Ryan's. Ryan might be willing to _share_ it, but it'd be, well, _sharing_. Connor could live with sharing, only it didn't exactly count for a whole apartment when you were _sharing_ , did it?

Connor stared at the ceiling. It agreed with him wholeheartedly. Things that couldn't actually talk usually did, which was why he asked them rhetorical questions as often as he did; they never mistook a rhetorical question for an actual one, the way _people_ did sometimes.

Of course, ceilings generally didn't offer much in the way of new ideas or suggestions on what to do next, which was a pity, given that Connor really could have done with some of that.

He was awake; he was in Ryan's bedroom; he'd had some pretty amazing sex; he'd established that he did not have a crush on the person with whom he'd had said pretty amazing sex, although he was man enough to admit he liked the man's apartment and could picture him as the Buffy to Connor's Giles (sort of, except that Connor didn't quite know where that left Abby and Stephen and Cutter and Claudia and Lester). All well and proper, but it didn't answer the question of: what next?

Turning away from the unhelpful, if agreeable ceiling, Connor turned to the left. A slightly more helpful alarm-clock that looked like it had never been in a collision with a wall (it had that in uncommon with Connor's own alarm-clock for general use, not to be confused with his prized, as-seen-on-Star-Trek digital alarm clock for looking at only) told him it was a little past nine in the morning.

"Coffee?"

Connor supposed that sneakily being in the last place Connor looked was just the kind of behavior to expect from a guy who was with the Special Forces. Tad annoying, that, but he supposed there were worse things, like Ryan expecting Connor to actually get out of bed and make coffee, instead of bringing it to him, all nice and easy, with a tray and food and a little vase with a flower in it that made Connor feel a bit girly, a bit like Ryan might have a crush on _him_.

"Smells good," he said. "Cream and sugar, please?" Ryan probably took his black, being a soldier and all. Connor worriedly wondered if the man even _had_ any cream; milk might do, too, in a pinch, only it wasn't quite the same.

Ryan held out the mug that had been on the tray. Connor accepted it a bit dubiously, then noticed it already had cream in it, which presumably meant Ryan'd already known how Connor liked his coffee.

He took his first sip a bit cautiously. It was very nice. "This is nice." Not hot enough to burn his tongue, but not the kind of lukewarm you got when the only working coffee machine was on the other side of the building and the person getting the coffee insisted on taking the elevator to get there. "This is very nice." Ryan suggestively put the tray on the bed. Aside from the small vase with the flower in it, Connor spotted several pieces of fruit, a couple of croissants, a can of juice, two glasses and toast. "I don't really eat a lot in the morning."

Connor had rather thought Ryan would, though. A hearty breakfast, and then off for a good run and to catch a few lethal creatures. Something like that. He'd never pictured there being croissants.

"You want these?" Connor reckoned he could probably get down a glass of juice. Disgustingly healthy, most likely, but it'd be kind of rude not to take _anything_ , and he didn't really feel up to toast or croissants, so fruit-juice it was. As soon as he'd finished his very nice cup of coffee.

"I already ate," Ryan said. He looked like maybe he felt a little bit guilty about that. "A couple of hours ago."

"Oh." Connor wasn't sure if he ought to ask why Ryan hadn't woken him up. Not like he'd have _wanted_ to be woken up at six or seven in the morning on a Saturday for anything less than an anomaly (and even then, he wouldn't have _liked_ it). "I see."

"If you don't want them though - "

Connor might only be halfway through his first cup of coffee of the day, but he wasn't an idiot. "Just don't like eating all by my lonesome, that's all," he said quickly. Nice apartment, great sex, no crush - not that big a deal to eat some breakfast, was it?

Ryan nodded and settled down on the bed. Connor somewhat abruptly realized that he was, in fact, not very well provided in the way of clothes. He didn't spot them on the floor, the way they showed it in the movies. "Got you a change of clothes."

Connor'd been about to bob his head pleasantly when an ugly suspicion reared its head. "You went over to Abby's?" Connor didn't want to have been a fly on the wall of Abby's living room during _that_ particular conversation. He'd much rather it hadn't happened at all.

"The ARC," Ryan clarified. "No new anomalies sighted yet," he added, as if Connor could have slept through that kind of event. It was all good and well to be part of the team that stood between the world and its destruction, only sometimes, Connor really wished he could get a good night's and better part of the morning's sleep.

"Oh," Connor said weakly. "Good." Because in hindsight, maybe Abby had known he liked the tall, not-very-dark and handsome-in-an-ordinary-kind-of-way, _male_ type. But maybe she hadn't known, and in that case, Connor figured he owed it to her to tell her the truth about him himself.

"You'd prefer to keep this between us, then?" There wasn't even a _hint_ of judgment in Ryan's tone. None. It was a little creepy; if Ryan'd suggested they were to keep this a secret, Connor would have - well, he might have complained about it. To Abby, maybe, or Stephen. While Ryan was somewhere else. Without actually using Ryan's name.

"No!" Although now that Connor thought about it, Ryan might. He knew from _Stargate: Atlantis_ that the USA had this 'don't ask, don't tell' policy in the army, which basically came down to the fact that if anyone found out you were gay, you got fired and all your old friends would stop talking to you. This wasn't the USA, of course, and Connor could practically _hear_ Lester stating how very much he didn't care about people's sexual preferences (not that he'd use that particular word, Connor didn't think). Still, if there was a policy - "Unless you want me to, that is."

Ryan shook his head and smiled. "No."

"Oh." No such policy over here, then. "Good." Americans were all crazy, anyway, even if they'd made some very fine TV-shows. "Because I was thinking, see." Ryan took a bite out of his croissant and nodded in encouragement. "I was thinking that maybe I could, you know, move in." Ryan stopped chewing. "If that's all right with you. Bit quick, I know, but hey, that's me. Little bit impulsive and all that. Um. It was just an idea. A silly idea, really. I mean, just because we've had sex, doesn't mean you want to - "

Ryan swallowed. "I'd like that," he said, smiling. Again.

It really - what was that term again? It really _lit up his face_ when Ryan smiled, Connor decided. Made him look kind of handsome-in-a-completely-not-ordinary-kind-of-way.

Maybe he did have a bit of a crush on the man after all.


End file.
